the rebels are making significant gains on damascus itself, and there are fears within the obama administration that president assad may be on the verge of panicking because he looks like he's becoming desperate. over the past couple of days intelligence sources reported that somebody in the regime had told the chemical weapons corps to be prepared. at the same time there was a flurry of renewed activity at a number of the chemical wep sites in and around the damascus area indicating to u.s. officials that it appeared at least the syrians were at least preparing to get ready to mix the precursor chemicals that would enable it to weaponize the artillery shells with deadly nerve gas. i can tell you today despite all these warning signs, tamron, u.s. officials are reporting, number one, that there's still no sign that these precursor chemicals have been moved. number two, there has been no sign that any of them have been weaponized, the artillery shells, and three, it looks like at least that people are just in the preparation stage just in case there should be an order to resort to chemical weapo